A film by Robert Mangold.
Last year was Ray Charles; this year Johnny Cash's number gets called. Walk The Line is the story of the Man in Black's beginnings and his years as a performer up to almost the point he marries June Carter. I don't call him a country singer because he doesn't fit that category. Of the big names in the early years of rock 'n' roll - Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and (of course) Elvis - Cash stayed closest to his country background but dabbled into the electric guitar era to escape the C & W label.
In the mid-1940s, John and his brother are growing up on sharecropper's land in Arkansas. their father (played by Robert Patrick), comes across as harsh and distant, not caring for Johnny; when the older brother dies in a woodshop accident, Dad resents Johnny for not being there - i.e., it should have been him that was killed. The resentment is mutual, and rears its head toward the end of the film.
Johnny grows up (now played by Joaquin Phoenix), and is in the Air Force, stationed in Germany. He marries his (apparent childhood) sweetheart Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), leaves the service and goes with her to Memphis. While an unsuccesful door-to-door salesman, he stumbles on Sun Studios, gets the idea to make a record. This is totally against everything Vivian wants (she wants to go home to Daddy, where John can work for him) - even when he starts to make a name for himself.
Here it becomes the rock/country/rap (shoot, I'm sure you could dig around a little in opera, and find it too) story all too familiar - groupies, drugs, alcohol (loss of major dude points for having a preference for Schlitz), mixed with success. Yet, he begins to appear in shows with June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), and theirs is definitely an on/off relationship, the off swtich being flipped due to Johnny's pill addiction. The touring takes its toll on their existing marriages, yet even when both are both free to marry, as well as perform together, the addiction maked theirs a moth-and-flame romance. In the end, with the help of June's parents, Johnny goes cold turkey, and the film ends on a happy note when he proposes (and she finally accepts).
The main four performances are all strong. Joaquin Phoenix captures Cash's passion and desire for Carter, yet the willingness to go to the dark side. Unlike Jamie Foxx in Ray, Phoenix sings all the songs here, and he succeeds in getting the sound without trying to sound like him. I'm not a big fan of this form of music, but the soundtrack is terrific. Reese Witherspoon plays June Carter as a woman who wants to believe the best but is enough of a realist to make clear her conditions for accepting Cash. And while she also sings the songs, and does so credibly, her singing is lost in the shadow of Phoenix's.
As Vivian (his first wife), Ginnifer Goodwin plays her as a totally spoiled brat, knowing that she is losing Johnny to the road, and all that entails; yet is cold as ice to him, wanting him to stay home and "have a life" - that is, she wants the security (read: money) of him working for Daddy. And as Ray Cash, Johnny's dad, Robert Patrick conveys the distance between father and son from early on, even after 20-plus years.
Walk The Line should get an Oscar nomination for best movie, and Phoenix for best actor. Based on his autobiographies, Johnny Cash emerges here as a man who fought his demons for nearly the first half of his life - losing the battles, yet winning the war. He shows us how not to get to the top, yet shows that getting to the top can be done - with a little help from your friends.
Good movie. Movies like this one, Ray, and 8 mile have helped me to have an appreciation for musicians that I have heard of but whose music I was not familiar with. Interesting love story and interesting to see his ties to prison.
I had seen quite a few biographies on Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash over the years. While, I didn't learn anything new in this movie it was still entertaining. It lasted over 2 hours and it didn't drag.
Two important things:
If you are a man who hates a stubborn, onery woman, you won't like June Carter.
If you are a woman who can't understand why anyone would love a loser like Johnny Cash, you wont' like this movie.
The singing is believeable, no doubt a direct influence of T Bone Burnett.
Amazingly, and unlike Ray, Phoenix and Witherspoon do their own singing.
:1: SO Good. I think I'm going to take my dad and see it again.
Saw it today and really liked it. :thumbsup: